I have read about some of your gel foods and while they look promising I have never tried one out. Just have not had the time lately.
My question is what are your thoughts on tofu as a supplement too their normal feeding schedule. One of the best breeders in Japan uses it as a regular supplement as well as sweet potatoes.
This is probably more of a koi question so if you don't reply I understand.

My goldies LOVE tofu but, i heard feeding sweet potatos are bad from the high carb

I am interested in hearing the answer to this too, as I eat tofu often, and could easily cook some to feed my fish, if it is good for them...

Laura

Hiya Jetman et. al!!!! I have been waiting patiently for Betty (Data Guru) to get in 200 posts so I could catch her attention!!! She is literally a walking encyclopedia...I've found many helpful things on goldies via links she has sent me! I've also tried starting a topic addressed to her...I was trying to catch her in Live Chat to thank her personally....and could never catch her! Now you can PM her! If you havent heard from her in a few days...it's probably just because she missed the post...not because she doesn't want to respond!!!

Cheers Data Guru!!!!!

wow, there are certain things...well many things...i never even thought about giving a fish until reading stuff from this site. People think I'm crazy for whta I feed my goldies...imagine adding tofu to the combination of fresh veggies they already get!

BTW from what I know is that tofu made from soy bean extract has ALOT of protein which is good for goldies, but contains very little vitamins almost no significant amount for your GFs, during process copper is added to it but at a very very small amount so that the soy paste will stick together, can't be harmful unless you feed it to them every day and not change your water.

My fish loves it as much as blood worms, but since it isnt healthy i use tofu as a treat every other week in conjunction with my peas, spinach, spirulina gellatin i make since apparently spirulina may be bad if consumed too much.

Hey you guys.

Haven't been able to get onto this site for a few days. Finally figured out how to get to it from Koko's main page.

The only thing I'd worry about is possible gas in the GI tract from it for those goldies who have a tendency to flip.

Should have decent protein levels, but would be less digestable than meat protein.

Survivor's coming on. *grin* I'll see if I can pull down info on tofu from te USDA database and post its nutritional content.

ok. for Tofu, raw, regular, prepared with calcium sulfate

Nutritional Breakout per 10 grams food
52% Protein (0.8 grams)
31% Fat (0.48 grams) WOW! wouldn't have guessed that.
5% Ash (0.1 grams)
12% Carbohydrate (0.2 grams) [2% fiber, 0% Sugars, 10% Complex]

7.6 Calories per 10 g food

Minerals
35 mg Calcium, Ca
0.5 mg Iron, Fe
3 mg Magnesium, Mg
9.7 mg Phosphorus, P
12.1 mg Potassium, K
0.7 mg Sodium, Na
0.08 mg Zinc, Zn
0.02 mg Copper, Cu
0.06 mg Manganese, Mn
0.9 mcg Selenium, Se

Vitamins
0.01 mg Vitamin C, total ascorbic acid
0.01 mg Thiamin
0.01 mg Riboflavin
0.02 mg Niacin
0.01 mg Pantothenic acid
0 mg Vitamin B-6
1.5 mcg Folate, total
0 mcg Vitamin B-12
8.5 IU Vitamin A, IU
0 mg Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol)
0 IU Vitamin D
0 mcg Vitamin K (phylloquinone)

Fatty Acids (*=Essential)
0.07 g Saturated Fats
0.11 g Unsaturated fats
0.03 g Omega 3 linolenic acid *
0.24 g Omega 6 linoleic acid
0 mg Cholesterol

Amino Acids (*=Essential)
0.01 g Tryptophan *
0.03 g Threonine *
0.04 g Isoleucine *
0.06 g Leucine *
0.05 g Lysine *
0.01 g Methionine *
0.01 g Cystine
0.04 g Phenylalanine *
0.03 g Tyrosine
0.04 g Valine *
0.05 g Arginine *
0.02 g Histidine *
0.03 g Alanine
0.09 g Aspartic acid
0.14 g Glutamic acid
0.03 g Glycine
0.04 g Proline
0.04 g Serine

Other
0 mcg Beta Carotene
0 mcg Cryptoxanthin, beta
0 mcg Lutein + zeaxanthin

awww i should start buying calcium fortifide cause of my snails... then again i dont usually feed my goldies tofu

Betty, this is amazing how you do that!! Cool!

I pull down the nutritional info from the USDA nutrient database and copy and paste it into a spreadsheet. Then massage it a bit to get it in sync with my complete list of nutrients.. and then paste the nutritional info into a tab that has formulas that calculate how much of what's in the gel based on how much I tell it of each food. I have another tab built that lists it out, so all I have to do is copy and paste into a post.

The soy breakout took about 5 minutes.

I keep hoping I'll have time to move it into a database and put it up on the web with a user friendly interface. Maybe over christmas break.

I'm also thinking about changing it to reflect nutrients per kg of food, since that's the metric that the RDAs I've found so far for fish are in and add the RDA info to the display. Couple of refs also recommend proportions for the essential amino and fatty acids and I need to figure out how to get those displayed as well. It's still pretty boggeling looking at that huge list of nutrients, especially if you don't have anything to compare each to.

I think a lot of fish foods use combinations of soy and corn gluten as a source of fairly digestable protein that's cheaper than fish/seafood protein. They heat treat them to make them more digestable. They also do ingredient splitting to make it look like the fish/seafood protein is the first ingredient to make you think it's the largest ingredient when it's not. if you read the label on your commercial fish food and see wheat flour, wheat middlings, wheat germ isted separately, that's ingredient splitting. I don't know how much of the protein from the uncooked soy is digestable, I'd bet heating it would help with digestability.

I would definately cook tofu before feeding it to goldfish. It is much more digestible (for people) if boiled or baked for a bit, I'd imagine it's the same for fish.

Laura

Betty,
I appreciate you taking your time too post the breakdown on it. It looks like it could serve as a good supplement in the correct conditions. By correct conditions I mean young growing fish and filters that are capable of handling such a rich diet. Again, this food should only be a supplement.
One of the best breeders of koi in all of japan uses this as a supplement too their regular diet and they are known for growing big fish. I have been feeding some too my koi and goldfish lately and digestion does not seem too be a problem. I do not cook it and feed sparingly.
What I have noticed so far in the koi is that their growth rate has seemed too explode. I will not consider tofu as the cause because there are way too many other possibilities and also a combination of possibilities.
But any time you can get a plant based diet offering those attributes (protein/fat ratio) it should be incorporated into the diet, at least sparingly.
Any thoughts?

Cool.

I think the more we put our heads together, the more successful we'll be at making sure the nutritional content is happy when feeding non-commercial diets.

Yea... agreed on the filtration... high protein diets produce more ammonia which gets turned into more nitrAte. So add more water changes to the list to keep nirAtes under control.

I suspect you get the growth cuz you get protein sparing when feeding a high fat diet. From what I've read on koi diets, the fat is used for energy and the protein is spared for building new tissue.

My only issue with the soy, is the oligosaccharides. The USDA nutrient database doesn't give any info on oligosaccharide content of foods, but some other sources says that soy is rich in raffinose and stachyose oligosaccharides which aren't digestable by fish. Certain bacteria in the GI tract can digest those and the end product is hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide gases. What I worry about there is feeding the gassy bugs and increasing their numbers. I think that may cause flipping when the GI tract gets too bouyant from the gas... especially in goldies who've had antibiotics that may also kill the normal flora of the GI tract opening up niches for other bacteria to colonize the GI tract.

My big moor flipped from flakes and from some algae wafers that had lots of wheat and corn in them, so he's eating a gel now with no grains and with added acidophilus (which also eat oligosaccharides and create an environment hostile to the gassy bugs). I think after this second batch of gel is finished, I may try him on something with one of the grains in it to see if his flipping recurrs. I'm hoping that once you get the flora in the GI tract altered with the acidophilus, gas from oligosaccharides won't be an issue cuz there won't be enough gassy bugs left to cause problems.